MasterCard to buy consumer offers platform Truaxis

(Reuters) - MasterCard Inc (MA.N) agreed on Thursday to buy Truaxis Inc, a provider of credit and debit card-linked offers through merchants and financial institutions, to help bolster its customer loyalty products.

A MasterCard logo is seen on a door outside a restaurant in New York, February 3, 2010. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Adding the Silicon Valley-based company’s platform to the MasterCard network will allow for real-time, targeted offers to consumers that can be automatically applied when a person uses a credit or debit card.

MasterCard is hoping its relationships with merchants and card issuers around the world will help it grow the business over time and also include it in its own products, said Tim Murphy, MasterCard’s chief product officer.

“We think the model is very attractive in terms of offering consumers better, more relevant, more targeted offers because those offers are conveyed to them through their bank,” Murphy said.